The frightening specter of the dawn of some kind of Terminator Age is conjured up in the title an e-book by Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee, both professors at MIT, Race Against The Machine: How the Digital Revolution is Accelerating Innovation, Driving Productivity, and Irreversibly Transforming Employment and the Economy.

Most digital books in libraries are treated like printed ones: only one borrower can check out an e-book at a time, and for popular titles, patrons must wait in line just as they do for physical books.